“Mrs. Thrale.—­Mr. Levet, I suppose, Sir, has the office of keeping the hospital in health? for he is an apothecary.

“Dr. J.—­Levet, Madam, is a brutal fellow, but I have a good regard for him; for his brutality is in his manners, not his mind.

“Mr. Thrale.—­But how do you get your dinners drest?

“Dr. J.—­Why De Mullin has the chief management of the kitchen; but our roasting is not magnificent, for we have no jack.

“Mr. T.—­No jack?  Why how do they manage without?

“Dr. J.—­Small joints, I believe, they manage with a string, and larger are done at the tavern.  I have some thoughts (with a profound gravity) of buying a jack, because I think a jack is some credit to a house.

“Mr. T.—­Well, but you will have a spit, too?

“Dr. J.—­No, Sir, no; that would be superfluous; for we shall never use it; and if a jack is seen, a spit will be presumed!

“Mrs. T.—­But pray, Sir, who is the Poll you talk of?  She that you used to abet in her quarrels with Mrs. Williams, and call out,’ At her again, Poll!  Never flinch, Poll!’

“Dr. J.—­Why I took to Poll very well at first, but she won’t do upon a nearer examination.

“Mrs. T.—­How came she among you, Sir?

“Dr. J.—­Why I don’t rightly remember, but we could spare her very well from us.  Poll is a stupid slut; I had some hopes of her at first; but when I talked to her tightly and closely, I could make nothing of her; she was wiggle waggle, and I could never persuade her to be categorical.”

The effect of an unbroken residence with such inmates, on a man of irritable temper subject to morbid melancholy, may be guessed; and the merit of the Thrales in rescuing him from it, and in soothing down his asperities, can hardly be over-estimated.  Lord Macaulay says, they were flattered by finding that a man so widely celebrated preferred their house to every other in London; and suggests that even the peculiarities which seem to unfit him for civilised society, including his gesticulations, his rollings, his puffings, his mutterings, and the ravenous eagerness with which he devoured his food, increased the interest which his new associates took in him.  His hostess does not appear to have viewed them in that light, and she was able to command the best company of the intellectual order without the aid of a “lion,” or a bear.  If his conversation attracted many, it drove away many, and silenced more.  He accounted for the little attention paid him by the great, by saying that “great lords and great ladies do not like to have their mouths stopped,” as if this was peculiar to them as a class.  “My leddie,” remarks Cuddie in “Old Mortality,” “canna weel bide to be contradicted, as I ken neabody likes, if they could help themselves.”